In the current economic climate the question that is now being asked is "Why not open source?" where it was previously "Why open source?" . Open applications help businesses maximize technology ROI. They help reduce total ownership costs and enhance overall competitiveness and agility. The UK government has just recently announced a new...

‘push for "open source" software to be used more widely among central and local government's 4m desktop computers.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/27/cloud-computing-government-uk

Our offering...

We at Jenerate have been working with open source solutions for the last decade. We are experts in the area of open source software, both commercial open source (COSS) and free open source (FOSS). We realize that the consideration of open source software is a new departure for many companies which is why we are offering the following services for open source. Of course we can perform the same analysis for tradition software or a mixture of tradition software and open source if required.

• Product Selection
• Installation
• Configuration
• Customization
• Service introduction

Product selection

We can help with product selection by performing some or all of the tasks listed below for you from requirements capture, through product indentification and competitive analysis.

Requirements capture

Perform a requirements capture workshop or workshops with the stakeholders and ensure that requirements are gathered at a detailed enough level to proceed with further analysis but without getting bogged down with the minutia. This includes the key functionality required and also non-functional requirements such as performance, stability, scalability, support needed etc. Deliverable at the end of this task is an outline requirements specification.

Product identification

Locate the products available in the space and outline information about them. Consider and rank the products based on this information and select the top ‘N' products for a detailed competitive analysis. Deliverable at the end of this task is outline information on all products identified and select the top ‘N'.

Competitive Analysis

We will source detailed information about the shortlisted products and supply this to you. We provide conclusions and recommendations and a cost benefit analysis of the various solutions. We will also provide summary information and scoring out of 10 for the products selected under the headings below. The following headings can be weighted according to your priorities to give priority to scores under some headings over others...

Technology Evaluation

Is the platform the software is built on solid? How standards complaint is it? How "open" is it?

Market Share

What is the market share compared to other open source products in this area and also all products in this area. Rather than just taking a simple but meaningless metric like the number of downloads we will take account of the type and size of companies using the product and their similarity to the client company.

Product Support

Availability of the required type of support. We will advise on the support choices available with various products and how these may be different from more typical commercial arrangements. We also will highlight any risks associated with different styles of open source support. Last thing you need is to build a solution on open source technology and be told that you are on your own with any issues you have with it.

Cost

How does opens source compare in terms of total cost of ownership. We calculate a rough three year cost model including initial costs, an estimate of the rollout cost and including support and staff costs. Many other factors other than licence costs need to be considered in calculating the TCO. We have experience of this in small and large organisations.

Customisability and extendability

Products can be customized to meet your requirements; this is generally through the use of maintenance screens. They can also changed or extended to add extra features by programming should you wish to do so. We will score the product on each of these attributes.

Application Integration

The ease of getting data in and out of the software and its interoperability with other key systems.

Functionality

Measure of how closely the product meets your requirments. This is done by going through a list of all requirents and comparing to product functionality.

Vendor tie-in

While open source software by definition doesn't have the same tie in as closed source software some open source products have multiple companies offering support etc and will get a higher score.

See here for a list of open source products we have experience with

Other services

We also offer the following services.

• Installation
• Configuration
• Customization
• Service introduction

Contact us for further Details